California One - Text
This subject is a 21 year-old Caucasian female. She was born in Panorama City and raised in Canoga Park. This self-confessed 'Valley Girl" does indeed have the glottalization, the "questioning" intonation, and the creaky voice associated with that dialect. Her childhood story will make an interesting study in itself. Recorded by Claudia Anderson and edited by Paul Meier. Running time 00:04:02.
TRANSCRIPTION
…valley girl, like, totally for her. And I, yeah I grew up in, like, Canoga Park, which is, um, kinda like, near, like, Woodland Hills and stuff, (voice unclear) like, near Topanga Canyon. And I have this older brother, and he’s wonderful. I…actually, just this past summer we became, like, best friends. But we’ve always like hated each other. He’s, um, 25 and I’m 20. He’d sit on my face and fart and it smelled like rotten corn. And he would, pin me down and hock loogies, you know, and like suck ’em back up right before they hit my face. And, ah, he, ah, he used to tell me about this old lady that would come and take me away if I was bad, or if I wasn’t nice to him or something. And, um, so one day he dressed up in, um, old lady clothes. And he had this gray wig. He was…I was like four, so he was like nine or ten or something. And, um, he dressed up like this old lady and he knocked on the front door. Like he went out the back door and he came around to the front door and he knocked. And my nanny opened the door and, like, I just saw him and, like, freaked out and ran away. But the best story of all is: we had just moved into a new house, um, in, like, West Hills, which is kind of, like, nicer than Canoga Park, so it was like a big deal. And, um, and I came home from school one day and he had this, like, crazy room. Like, he was, like, kind of a fucked-up kid. He was, like, doing a lot of drugs at a really young age. And, like, his walls were painted with, like, demons. He’s an incredible artist. So, like the walls had, like, just these amazing murals of these, like, really evil demons all over them. And, like, the inside of cassette tapes were stapled all over the ceiling. So there was just, like, black stringy stuff, like, hanging down from the ceiling all over. And, like, um, just everything was, like, black and dark and evil looking. And he had, like, a board with, like, black widows painted all over it that he’d caught and pinned while they were still alive. So he’d taken…my grandpa had made me this beautiful wooden cradle and given me a baby doll to put inside the cradle—and my grandpa was dead now. And my brother took that baby doll and he set it on…wait, he nailed it to a wooden cross he built, like, he nailed it upside down to a wooden cross and set it on fire, and hung it on the wall in his room. And I came home from school and he was like…and I was probably like five so he was like ten. Oh my God! (laughs) Oh my God, this is so horrible. I got home from school and he’s, like, “Trisha! Guess what I did to your doll. It’s so cool. You’re gonna love it!” And he was serious. And I was like, “Okay, what did you do?” And I, like, follow him into, like, the bedroom and, um…maybe I, maybe he was twelve and I was seven…that sounds, like, more right. Um, so I follow him into his bedroom, which I was always really scared to go in his bedroom anyway. So, like, I would stick close by his side. And, ah, and I see this doll, like, hanging on upside down crucifix, like, burnt to a crisp hanging above his bed and I flipped out. Like, I was screaming and crying and, like *makes sobbing sound*. And I took it to my mom and my mom, like, took it off the crucifix and she was like, “There, you have your doll back.” And I was like. “What?!?” Like, its hair was, like, burnt and, like, melted ’cause it had, like, that, you know, like, plastic hair. It was awful. I was so upset.
Transcribed by Mitchell Kelly, January 15, 2008. Emendation offered by Denis Drescher, April 21, 2009.